


the river's tale

by lavitanuova



Category: The Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Cyberpunk, London, Multi, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28027527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavitanuova/pseuds/lavitanuova
Summary: here, when i say i never want to be without you, somewhere else i am saying i never want to be without you again. - bob hicockor; three strangers & a bridge & the city of london (but not quite as we know it)
Relationships: Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray/Will Herondale
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	the river's tale

Once upon a time, two boys and a girl loved each other. But theirs is a story of leaving, always leaving, and it ends with two instead of three. 

_ A city watches this, and the river flows on.  _

* * *

Once upon a time, a boy without a heart makes his way through a sleeping city. His name is O Gim Ming, and he clutches his satchel in one hand and his violin in another, preoccupied with avoiding potholes and puddles. It's dawn on the first day of summer, which means that the sky casts a brighter-than-normal pallor over the centuries-old buildings. It also means that he's going to be late for his recital. If he’d taken the Tube like his classmates, he’d almost be there by now, but it’s dreadfully expensive and the London rent is already burning through what’s left of his parents’ savings. He quickens his pace. Perhaps he can make it over the Thames with a minute or so to spare. 

In the posters and in the speeches, the politicians call London the Miracle City. It’s been burnt and razed through three world wars and every time it’s risen from the grave, always drizzling and neon-lit. Strangely fitting. A miracle city for a miracle boy, living on borrowed time.

He’s grateful, he really is. This is the life he’d always dreamt of when he was a child: travelling the world, a place in the London Conservatoire, a flat of his own- but he didn’t want it to be like this. The violin he carries should have been a treasured gift, not barely rescued from the rubble of his home; New Year’s dinners should have been a source of embarrassment when family pinched his cheeks and told him to eat more; the heart in his chest should still be his own and not a thrumming, silver thing.

The whispers about him in the hallways of the Conservatoire aren’t quiet either. War refugee, scholarship student, Enhanced, the list goes on. The only person at school who doesn’t treat him like a child is Ms. Branwell. 

_ You're brilliant, _ she tells him,  _ you don't miss a note, but there's no soul to your playing. I'm not hearing the emotion in it, you understand? A hundred kids on the waiting list can play Bach and Beethoven as well as you do. So what sets you apart from them?  _

The truth is that he doesn’t know.

He doesn't want inspiration for inspiration's sake. The long years stretch out before him, foggy as the morning sky, and he doesn’t want any of it if he has to be alone. He wants someone that walks the London streets by his side, he wants someone that laughs with him in a house all their own, he wants to understand the melody of someone's heart. 

There has to be more to living than this. Gim Ming knows this well, though he can't say why, and the  _ wanting _ still grips him as he steps onto Blackfriars Bridge.

* * *

Once upon a time, a boy awakes with a voice in his head. His name is Wylan Halladay, and for him this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. In fact, he hears the same voice every night. He’s never been able to place it, though. It's soft yet strong, with a hint of a lilting accent, but it doesn’t belong to anyone he knows. 

_ Follow the witchlight, _ the voice said, and in the darkness of his sleep he moved towards it. Something, no brighter than the flame of a candle, illuminated the silhouette of a young man. Wylan's hand grasped the rough fabric of his coat, and the man turned, the light revealing the silver in his eyes and hair—

The dream fell away. 

On mornings like this when he hears the voice, he'll go downstairs and take a walk around the city, even though there isn't much around except deteriorating council blocks. Every one's the same bland grey, but in every flat there lives someone with their own story and own dreams. He gazes up at the little square windows, plentiful as stars in the sky, and he wonders why in this city of millions he still feels like there's something missing from his life.

It’s true, isn’t it? Oh, he has friends, of course. Nameless people. Always changing. He ditches school with them to wreak havoc around town, smuggling drinks and sneaking into pubs where no one cares that they’re seventeen. There are girls too, but he never goes too far with any of them. It feels- weird? Strange? He doesn’t know why. It’s not like anybody would stop him. Cee doesn’t miss an opportunity to bother him about it, and Eliza would too if she was still here. 

The only thing that gets in the way are the vaguest of images, like photographs taken with a broken camera: gold dresses, paper books, blood and holy water. Emotions, too. A guilt lodged in the deepest parts of his brain, staring up at him with his sister’s eyes. A strange loneliness that can’t be sated with nights on the town and girls easy on the eyes. Something that feels like a hole in his heart where someone should be.

(Perhaps not some _ one _ .)

Speaking of books, he taps his headset to pull up his audiobook of A Tale Of Two Cities, skimming to a random page to try to take his mind off his existential ennui. Losing himself in the words, he imagines that the city around him isn’t the drab London he’s used to but instead the elegant London of the distant past, carriages and corsets and dinner jackets. (He pictures himself in a suit and top hat and has to stop himself from laughing.) (but he doesn't need to try that hard, because the drama's mounting in Volume III and though he knows how the story goes he can't help but wish it would turn out differently this time around.)

When the audiobook ends, Sydney's still dead, the world still spins, and the sun's just beginning to filter through the clouds. Wylan blinks in the strangely bright light, realising he's made his way to a strange and unfamiliar part of the city—except it's not that strange, and it's not that unfamiliar, because in his distraction he finds he's walked all the way onto Blackfriars Bridge.

* * *

Once upon a time a girl changes her identity with the press of a button. Her name is- well, it differs by the night. If you’d caught her just a few minutes earlier, bag heavy with illegal parts, she’d tell you she was EM-B41, maildroid, and  _ these packages are confidential please step aside thank you.  _ But it’s almost morning, her face-projector’s off, and so for now her name will be Trinity Gordon. 

She should be heading back to the flat by now, splitting her loot with the sisters in exchange for a charging-port and a roof over her head. It’s been their arrangement ever since Nate and Tabitha split on her, and she’s never protested against it. She knows she should count herself lucky. There’s nowhere else in the city for Enhanced to go, let alone a sheltered teenage girl an ocean away from home. Her situation is tenuous, though. Any mistake or sharp word could land her on the street, and she very much enjoys having a complete body, cybernetic or not. 

Staying out this late with a haul is never a good idea, and every security camera seems to be pointed her way. She sneaks out from under the tunnel, peering behind her to make sure no one’s seen her switch off her disguise, and emerges onto the pedestrian pathway beside the Thames. The first rays of the sun glint off the dark waters, the same rays that glint off the mirrored glass of New York skyscrapers. It's a strangely clear day, the air just a bit less smoggy than the month before. 

The steps on her left lead down to the city. The pathway on her left leads up to a bridge. 

She pauses at the junction. 

Her common sense screams at her to run back to the flat before the police droids find her. Before the sisters decide to beat her bloody when she returns. Before anything unnatural or strange can happen. 

But today's the first day of summer, and she wants to see the rising sun. At least, that's what she tells herself. She doesn't think anything of the tug deep in her chest, quiet but undeniable, that pulls her up the pathway on the left and onto the bridge. Why would she? There's nothing special about Blackfriars. It's just another crumbling bridge across a pollution-clogged river, once cherry-red but now stained grey with time.

In her opinion, there are no miracles left in this Miracle City. Sure, there might have been some back in the distant past, where carriages rattled down the streets and the women choked their chests with corsets, but that's as fictional to her as any other world in her books. That time's long dead. There's no magic to be found in the squabbling of politicians, in the glow of neon holograms, in the stifling mask upon her face she has to wear to survive. 

What Trinity doesn't know is this: Stories are also a kind of miracle, and London is full to bursting with them. 

* * *

_ The sleeping city stirs awake. The traffic on Blackfriars Bridge is beginning to thicken, cars and buses and pedestrians flowing through its roads and paths like the river below their feet. Someone honks their horn. Someone shouts out their window. Someone swears at the person who bumped into them. It's a flurry of noise and people and movement, but it doesn't stop three strangers from catching a glimpse of each other, and very suddenly the world tips on its head.  _

_ (blue / brown / grey) _

_ (is that you?)  _

_ (is that you?)  _

_ (is that you?)  _

_ They push their way through the crowd, ignoring the stares and the shoves and the stepped-on toes. Gim Ming apologises as he rushes through. Wylan doesn't. No one notices Trinity enough for her to have to apologise in the first place. The three of them break out in a run towards each other, through memories and worlds and lives, through England and Wales and America, through institutes and mansions and markets— they don't stop running, they couldn't stop even if they wanted to, they don't stop until they're three again. _

* * *

Once upon a time, two boys and a girl collide in the middle of a busy pavement. Their story hasn't been written yet. Their story is theirs to tell. 

If the city remembers them, it doesn't say a word.

**Author's Note:**

> Gim Ming is the Cantonese pronunciation of Jianming (I think), Trinity means three, and I closed my eyes and picked Wylan from a list of boy names that started with W.


End file.
